Rodney_King
04-26-2007, 05:55 PM
Long time lurker, first time poster. As you'll likely notice, I'm more on the atheist side of things.
Today I was thinking about Time Travel. It's such a common topic in popular culture, yet respresented so ridiculously. I'm sure a lot of what I have to say has been said many times before, but I have no idea where. Plus, it will be interesting to say what some of the more Christian posters will say regarding the issue.
Time Travel. Is it possible? Well, we obviously travel through time every day. It goes on, as we experience. Since our perception does seem to often change, I think it would definitely be possible to "go faster" or "go slower". If our thoughts are sped up, would we not then experience time as seeming slower? Drug hazes are definitely an interesting example where time can seem to move slowly or quickly. You may say "But time is actually moving at the same speed". Maybe it seemed that way to you, but to the drug user, it passed differently. Since speed is relative, I think we can assume that really only your own perception of time matters.
Imagine a drug that made the user's thoughts speed up. Actually, everything the user did could speed up. Say, you can now walk 25% faster, think 25% faster, and so on. The world's measurement of time would remain the same, yet you would experience it differently than everyone else. I know this isn't really "time travel", but it is somewhat related to what I am eventually getting at.
Basically, if you used this drug(assuming no side effects), you would have more time in your life to do whatever it is you'd like to. Now, imagine every single person in the world using this drug. I think it's pretty clear that even though people would be getting way more done, once people forgot what it was like before the drug, no one would even notice. Other organisms would behave the same, but we would now be faster. It is really indistinguishable from the opposite case, where everything else in the world was suddenly given a "slowing down" drug. As we all know, time is relative.
Time machines. Generally, this is the way the concept of time travel works in books, movies, people's heads, etc. You step in, and then you are transported to the time. There was a recent discussion here that i was reminded of.
http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showfl...=2#Post10063624 (http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showflat.php?Cat=0&Number=10063624&an=0&page=2#Pos t10063624)
Some people said things such as "time doesn't exist", others a more theoretical basis. On a strict philosophical basis, we can't really say whether time exists. I can say I exist, but I can't say that YOU exist. Likewise, I can't say whether time "exists". But if there wasn't any concept of time, how would anything ever happen in our lives? A concept of time seems to be a necessary condition for self-awareness. If there were no such thing, it would seem we would be unable to do anything. We would just sort of exist infinitely. There would be no cause and effect, nor anything of the sort. We would just...."exist". I have no idea what this existence would entail. Say we just existed, and could think of this concept....but we couldn't think of anything else. Many religious afterlife depictions seem to be similar. When you go to heaven, you will "be with God infinitely". This is seen as good. But it seems to me that if we were just existing infinitely, and not doing anything else...this would suck. I guess the idea is you would be happy infinitely..and so on. The problem is, we cannot describe such states, since happiness depends on sadness, good depends on evil, and without the contrast what would they be? Nothing and everything, much like the popular koan.
I'm afraid I'm getting off topic; let me steer discussion more towards the following. If we could travel anywhere we wanted in time, essentially we could just do whatever we liked with our existence, infinitely. Seems like a good plan. Also kind of falls in line with the "All is one" theory. This is nothing like Time Travel is portrayed by any popular culture reference. I think it's pretty clear that the popular version has many more issues than the grandfather paradox. I could just sit in the time machine forever, continually traveling back one minute in time.
instead of just typing thoughts for no real reason, now i will have some questions.
Question:
Christians, what are your thoughts on time and time travel? I don't feel time travel and Christianity mesh together well at all, although some probably feel otherwise. I don't think logic and Christianity mesh either, and we've seen how much people care about that.
Question #2:
If you could press a button and shift into infinite existence right now, would you do it?
#3:
If you could live in a world without evil, would you do it? This question may not contain the word "time", but it is definitely related to #2.
#4:
If you could choose any time to have been born, when would it be?
This post is out of hand long, so I will quit now and see what everyone has to say. Hopefully I made sense and didn't just waste everyone's time. And if I did? Big deal. You can't get it back anyway.
Rodney King
Today I was thinking about Time Travel. It's such a common topic in popular culture, yet respresented so ridiculously. I'm sure a lot of what I have to say has been said many times before, but I have no idea where. Plus, it will be interesting to say what some of the more Christian posters will say regarding the issue.
Time Travel. Is it possible? Well, we obviously travel through time every day. It goes on, as we experience. Since our perception does seem to often change, I think it would definitely be possible to "go faster" or "go slower". If our thoughts are sped up, would we not then experience time as seeming slower? Drug hazes are definitely an interesting example where time can seem to move slowly or quickly. You may say "But time is actually moving at the same speed". Maybe it seemed that way to you, but to the drug user, it passed differently. Since speed is relative, I think we can assume that really only your own perception of time matters.
Imagine a drug that made the user's thoughts speed up. Actually, everything the user did could speed up. Say, you can now walk 25% faster, think 25% faster, and so on. The world's measurement of time would remain the same, yet you would experience it differently than everyone else. I know this isn't really "time travel", but it is somewhat related to what I am eventually getting at.
Basically, if you used this drug(assuming no side effects), you would have more time in your life to do whatever it is you'd like to. Now, imagine every single person in the world using this drug. I think it's pretty clear that even though people would be getting way more done, once people forgot what it was like before the drug, no one would even notice. Other organisms would behave the same, but we would now be faster. It is really indistinguishable from the opposite case, where everything else in the world was suddenly given a "slowing down" drug. As we all know, time is relative.
Time machines. Generally, this is the way the concept of time travel works in books, movies, people's heads, etc. You step in, and then you are transported to the time. There was a recent discussion here that i was reminded of.
http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showfl...=2#Post10063624 (http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showflat.php?Cat=0&Number=10063624&an=0&page=2#Pos t10063624)
Some people said things such as "time doesn't exist", others a more theoretical basis. On a strict philosophical basis, we can't really say whether time exists. I can say I exist, but I can't say that YOU exist. Likewise, I can't say whether time "exists". But if there wasn't any concept of time, how would anything ever happen in our lives? A concept of time seems to be a necessary condition for self-awareness. If there were no such thing, it would seem we would be unable to do anything. We would just sort of exist infinitely. There would be no cause and effect, nor anything of the sort. We would just...."exist". I have no idea what this existence would entail. Say we just existed, and could think of this concept....but we couldn't think of anything else. Many religious afterlife depictions seem to be similar. When you go to heaven, you will "be with God infinitely". This is seen as good. But it seems to me that if we were just existing infinitely, and not doing anything else...this would suck. I guess the idea is you would be happy infinitely..and so on. The problem is, we cannot describe such states, since happiness depends on sadness, good depends on evil, and without the contrast what would they be? Nothing and everything, much like the popular koan.
I'm afraid I'm getting off topic; let me steer discussion more towards the following. If we could travel anywhere we wanted in time, essentially we could just do whatever we liked with our existence, infinitely. Seems like a good plan. Also kind of falls in line with the "All is one" theory. This is nothing like Time Travel is portrayed by any popular culture reference. I think it's pretty clear that the popular version has many more issues than the grandfather paradox. I could just sit in the time machine forever, continually traveling back one minute in time.
instead of just typing thoughts for no real reason, now i will have some questions.
Question:
Christians, what are your thoughts on time and time travel? I don't feel time travel and Christianity mesh together well at all, although some probably feel otherwise. I don't think logic and Christianity mesh either, and we've seen how much people care about that.
Question #2:
If you could press a button and shift into infinite existence right now, would you do it?
#3:
If you could live in a world without evil, would you do it? This question may not contain the word "time", but it is definitely related to #2.
#4:
If you could choose any time to have been born, when would it be?
This post is out of hand long, so I will quit now and see what everyone has to say. Hopefully I made sense and didn't just waste everyone's time. And if I did? Big deal. You can't get it back anyway.
Rodney King